Quake Victims File Suit Against Insurers

A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday on behalf of Northridge earthquake victims who said they were wronged by their insurance companies.

The suit--filed by attorney William Audet of San Jose in Los Angeles Superior Court--was filed against four insurance companies and former state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. The four companies are: Allstate, Farmers Home Mutual, State Farm and 21st Century.

Audet said the plaintiffs now live in Camarillo and Lancaster but could not say where they lived at the time of the earthquake.

The suit alleges that the insurance companies and Quackenbush conspired to keep policyholders from getting a fair settlement of their claims.

Several similar suits have been filed by Los Angeles-based lawyers, including Howard Snyder, who said he believes his cases filed in April were the first. One of them, Sherman vs. Allstate, has already been granted class-action status by the court.

“The earliest filed case, by court file number, gets the class-action status,” Snyder said. Defendants can ask that separate, similar cases filed against them be folded into the court-named class-action suit.

Audet, who is seeking additional people to join his lawsuit, said he is prepared to go it alone or join the earlier filed suits.

“Whichever gets the maximum dollar amount for the people in our suit,” he said.